Here we discuss sex and politics, loudly, no apologies hence "screeds" and "attitude."

10/17/2014

flu shot

having already upset some of you with my take on sunday's 'revenge' (worst episode of the show ever), i'm going to hold off on 'scandal' and use the excuse that i got a flu shot today and those always make me sick.

in fact, let me blog about that.

i got my flu shot today and i'm on the phone with 1 of my sisters, the know-it-all in the medical profession.

'the flu shot cannot make you sick.'

that's what she tells me even though every year i'm sick for a day or 2 after i get a shot.

'the flu shot cannot make you sick. it's a dead virus.'

uh-huh.

so we're on the phone and she's googling all over and cdc this and who that and blah blah blah.

then she gets to something, i think at web md, about the side effects.

Thursday, October 16, 2014. Chaos and violence continue, the Iraqi
Parliament meets and then adjourns until Saturday, the White House's
'diplomacy' team heads home, CNN's Elise Labott forces the Pentagon
spokesperson to dance, and much more.

US Vice President Joe Biden has two sons: Beau and Hunter. Hunter is in the news. Eric Brander (CNN) reports
that Hunter Biden's February 2014 discharge from the Navy Reserve was
an "administrative discharge" after he tested positive for cocaine. I
know Joe (and like Joe) and we're not going to be accused or hiding what
happened. But we're also not a gossip site so let's note that drug use
takes place in all families, that the military especially needs to up
their efforts to address drug use and addiction.

Hunter is an adult and responsible for his own decisions and, if he has
an addiction, the treatment of his disease. He has issued a statement
today taking responsibility.

Falling down doesn't define us, how we brush ourselves off and resume
our journey does. All eyes are on Hunter right now and that's not a
comfortable place for anyone to be in.

Ibrahim al-Jaafari is a former prime minister of Iraq and is currently the Minister of Foreign Affairs. National Iraqi News Agency reports he held a press conference today to announce "that there was no state party which asked to bring ground troops to Iraq."

That's a nice thought. Not a clear one, not an honest one, but a nice one.

If Barack Obama owes his presidency to one thing, it was the good sense he had back in 2002 to call the Iraq War what it was: “dumb.”

Now, with scarcely a whisper of debate, Obama has become the fourth
consecutive U.S. president to bomb Iraq — and in fact has outdone his
predecessors by spreading the war to Islamic State targets in Syria as
well. With the Pentagon predicting that this latest conflict could rage
for three years or longer, Obama is now poised to leave behind a Middle East quagmire that closely resembles the one he was elected to end.

But before Ibrahim gets crowned the great pretender, check out Pentagon
spokesperson Rear Admiral John Kirby. In the grand tradition of the
crossovers on The Bionic Woman and The Six Million Dollar Man, today the Pentagon and the State Dept held a joint press conference. During the press conference, CNN's Elise Labott nailed him and Kirby just pretended otherwise.RADM KIRBY: Thanks. Thank you. Thanks, Jen. Thanks for welcoming me
over here. As Jen said, this is something we’ve been talking about for a
long time. We just work together so closely every single day that we
thought this was a good idea. And now I’m going to beg her to come over
to the Pentagon and do it in our briefing room as well. So that’ll be
the next iteration of this.I just want to update you on – quickly on two military operations
that the Defense Department has been focused on in recent weeks: our
efforts against ISIL, of course, and our efforts in the Ebola response
in West Africa.With regard to the counter-ISIL effort, Operation Inherent Resolve –
we just officially unveiled that name yesterday – U.S. forces conducted
14 airstrikes near the town of Kobani yesterday and today. Initial
reports that we’re getting from Central Command indicate that those
strikes successfully hit 19 ISIL buildings, two command posts, three
fighting positions, three sniper positions, one staging location, and
one heavy machine gun. Very precise targeting. With these airstrikes, we
took advantage of the opportunity to hit ISIL as they attempt to mass
their forces and combat power on the Kurdish-held positions – or
portions, I’m sorry, of Kobani. While the security situation there does
remain tenuous, ISIL’s advances appear to have slowed and we know that
we have inflicted damage upon them.On our response to Ebola in West Africa, Operation United Assistance,
our forces on the ground in Liberia continue to make progress in
setting up infrastructure and facilities to support the international
response. Setup has been complete on the 25-bed hospital, and we expect
it to be fully operational, with U.S. public health service medical
workers taking responsibility for that unit next week. Meanwhile,
personnel from the U.S. Naval Medical Research Center continue to
operate three mobile medical labs, which provide 24-hour turnaround
results on samples. To date, they have processed more than 1,200 total
samples. And lastly, construction continues on the Ebola treatment
facilities with the first expected to be completed by the end of the
month.And I want to emphasize, again, that no U.S. military personnel will
be providing direct patient care to the local population. As my Pentagon
colleagues have heard me say many times, we’re focused on four lines of
effort and only four lines of effort: command and control, logistics
support, training, and engineering.With that --MS. PSAKI: All right. Well, as we typically do, we’ll stay with one
topic. We talked about this, so let’s try to do that if we can. I know
yesterday was a little wild and wooly.Go ahead, Matt.QUESTION: Thank you. I’m looking forward to this. Double the pleasure, double the information, I hope. Right?MS. PSAKI: Double the fun.QUESTION: Double the fun.MS. PSAKI: Yes.QUESTION: (Off-mike.)QUESTION: I just have one logistic question about this briefing. Are
you, Admiral, going to be staying for the whole thing or are you going
to leave?RADM KIRBY: That depends on how --QUESTION: All right, because I have a question that’s not related to either Ebola or ISIL for you.RADM KIRBY: No, I’ll be here.QUESTION: Okay.RADM KIRBY: I’ll be here the whole time.QUESTION: All right. So let’s start with Kobani then. So in your
comments just now in talking about the progress that the operation has
made --RADM KIRBY: Yes.QUESTION: -- does this mean that saving Kobani from falling has now become a priority in the campaign?RADM KIRBY: Well, we’ve been focused on Kobani for a long time. This
isn’t the first day that we’ve done strikes there. We’ve been doing them
for a long time. What makes Kobani significant is the fact that ISIL
wants it. And the more they want it, the more forces and resources they
apply to it, the more targets that are available for us to hit there. I
said it yesterday, keep saying it: Kobani could still fall. Our military
participation is from the air and the air only right now, and we’ve all
been honest about the fact that air power alone is not going to be able
to save any town in particular.QUESTION: Right. But you and other officials, including Jen, have
said in the past that – or indicated, and Secretary Kerry has as well,
that losing Kobani or Kobani falling to ISIL is not a huge strategic
loss, and now it seems like you’re really ramping up the effort to keep
it – to prevent it – to prevent it from falling. And I’m just wondering,
has the decision been made within the Administration that the
propaganda or other symbolic – a symbolic victory in Kobani would be too
much to stomach, from your – an ISIL victory in Kobani would be too
much?RADM KIRBY: I think we’ve been pretty consistent about the fact that
we need to all be prepared for other towns and other cities to fall too.
This group wants ground. They want territory, they want infrastructure.
We all need to be prepared for them to continue to try to grab that,
and succeed in taking it. There’s been no strategic shift here as far as
I know, at least from the military perspective, about Kobani or any
other town. What we’re trying to do in Syria – and this is an important
point, Matt – in Syria we’re trying to deny safe haven and sanctuary.
They want safe haven and sanctuary in Kobani; we’re trying to help not
let that happen.So Kobani matters from that perspective. It also matters tactically
because, as I said, they’re putting more resources to the fight, so
there are more targets. We’ve killed several hundred of their fighters
in just these strikes in and around Kobani. It would be irresponsible
for us not to try to target them in a more aggressive way as they become
more aggressive around Kobani itself.And the last thing is, frankly, it’s an issue of balancing resources.
One of the reasons you’ve seen additional strikes in the last couple of
days is because we haven’t been able to strike quite as much, quite as
aggressively inside Iraq. There’s been terrible weather there,
sandstorms this time of year. It’s made it very hard for us to get
intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms up over to see
what we’re trying to do in Iraq. So we’ve had resources available that
we might not have otherwise had available to strike them there in
Kobani. Does that answer your question?QUESTION: Yeah, I think so.QUESTION: Can I follow up?MS. PSAKI: Mm-hmm.QUESTION: Can I follow on that? Elise Labott with CNN. Welcome.RADM KIRBY: Hi.QUESTION: Yesterday, General Allen said that the increase in
airstrikes in Kobani was for humanitarian purposes, and it sounds like
now you’re saying that there’s more of a target. Rather than
humanitarian aspects along the lines of what you did with the Yezidis,
it sounds like this is more – you have more targets of opportunity.RADM KIRBY: It is that. There’s a humanitarian component to it, no question about it.QUESTION: Well, there wasn’t last week. I mean, it didn’t seem last week that there was.RADM KIRBY: No, there’s a – there was a humanitarian component to it.
But we don’t estimate that – right now, we think there’s hundreds, not
thousands, of citizens remaining in Kobani. It fluctuates and it
changed, but we believe most of the population is out of there. That
doesn’t mean they’re out of danger, though, and so there is a
humanitarian component to this. If we can help the Kurdish militia keep
Kobani – keep ISIL out of Kobani, then you by default are helping
protect the population that remains there. And so there is a component
to it.QUESTION: So is it more now that you feel that as long as you have
targets, you’ll continue to strike them, or is it now you’ve made the
decision that come hell or high water you’re going to make sure that
this town doesn’t fall?RADM KIRBY: We are going to continue – I think it’s a great question.
We are on the offense against these guys. There’s this narrative out
there that they’re opportunistic and they’re adaptive and they’re agile.
Nobody is more opportunistic or agile or adaptive than the United
States military, and so we’re going to continue to go after them
wherever they are and wherever we can.There’s going to be a limit, though. You can’t just hit every place
you know them to be, because we do – unlike them, we have to be discreet
and discriminant about collateral damage and civilian casualties. So
we’re going to hit them where we can, where we can do it effectively,
have an effect on their ability to sustain themselves and to operate,
but without having a bad effect – a negative effect – on the surrounding
population.QUESTION: But it’s – but you said it still could fall and that --RADM KIRBY: Yeah --QUESTION: -- wouldn’t mean that your goals weren’t achieved.RADM KIRBY: That’s – our goals have not changed with respect to
going after ISIL in Syria or in and around Kobani. And I said it
yesterday, I’ll say it again: That town could still fall. We all need to
be prepared for that possibility.

Pretenders also include the Iraqi Parliament which is back from its long holiday. Kind of. All Iraq News reports that today's session saw 217 MPs show up. That might be good news were it not for the fact that Iraq's Parliament has 328 MPs.

So in the midst of multiple crises which have led other nations to
contribute (wisely in the case of Germany which is sending doctors,
poorly in the case of those dropping bombs), over 100 members of
Parliament can't even show up for the sessions?

An informed source said Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi request to extend
the deadline to provide the names of the security ministers for 24
hours. The source said in a press statement: "The prime
minister, Haidar al-Abadi asked the parliament to extend the deadline to
provide the names of the security minister for 24 hours."

Sure, why not?

Iraq hasn't had either since March 2010, so why rush now?

Because Iraq's falling apart.

So they showed up today -- or about two-thirds did -- and did nothing and now, All Iraq News reports, they've decided to adjourn until Saturday.

Angry residents in the neighbourhood threw stones at police checkpoints
and police cars that arrived to respond to the blasts, prompting police
to withdraw from the area. Senior Iraqi officials have tried to reassure
residents that the capital is too well-protected for militants to
capture, even as they struggle to stop frequent near daily deadly
attacks.

On the topic of the Iraqi police, Elizabeth Palmer (CBS News) observes,
"Basic training lasts 45 days. The young recruits are almost done. In
two weeks, they'll be sent into combat. They're called police, but
they're trained like the military." A ton of money -- US tax payer
money -- was already spent training the Iraqi police.

You may remember that the Minister of Interior said in the fall of 2011
that the US should find a better way to spend their money and that
training wasn't needed.

Woah.

You may remember that the man the US press insisted was the Minister of
the Interior said that. He wasn't the Minister. The ministry was
headless. Nouri al-Maliki, thug and prime minister, refused to nominate
anyone to head the security ministries. Instead, he named flunkies
'acting ministers' which -- while unconstitutional -- allowed him to
control the ministries.

So actually, the flunky was speaking on behalf of Nouri.

Now they need help.

One plan being tossed around was basically three sets of forces -- Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'ites -- making up a national guard.

The justification for this was probably best explained by Fareed Zakaria (CNN's Global Public Square), "Billions of dollar poured into it, because it was based on the idea that
there was an Iraq, that there was a nation that there would be a
national army for. Maybe we need a different strategy, which is to stand
up sectarian militias, Shia militias, Sunni militias. They already
exist. And the Kurds have their Peshmerga, that model. Send them into
fight in their areas, not in other areas where they would be regarded as
a foreign army."

Momentum has swung against the proposal to create a national guard that
would encompass local forces in Iraq’s provinces as rival political
blocs expressed reservations over who would be allowed into the new
service and how funding would be allocated.The Obama administration has pushed the national guard proposal as a way
to bring minority Sunnis closer to the Shiite-dominated central
government after years of policies espoused by former Prime Minister
Iraqi
Nouri al-Maliki
that excluded them.

So the police are being rushed through training, the national guard idea
appears dead, Shi'ite militias terrorize Sunnis throughout Iraq. On
those militias, NINA quotes
Kirkuk's Sheikh Othman Agha calling for "a solution to the militias,
which are spread in public roads and highways being contrary to the
Constitution and detrimental to the national interest and harmony among
citizens of one nation."

It's a shame the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Interior aren't addressing these issues and --

Oh, wait, again there is no Minister of Defense and there is no Minister of Interior.

All Iraq News reports
rumors that Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi intends to make new
nominations for the post on Saturday: Khalid al-Ubaidi for Minister of
Defense and the always controversial Ahmed Chalabi for Minister of
Interior.